I'm beginning to worry; I think I may be turning into my Dad. It all started with Portishead, luring me in with their sultry vocals and atmospheric videos, then Bourbon Princess got in on the act, and Erin McKeown, and that damned Beth Gibbons solo album, and now Carina Round. I'm having to face up to the fact that I may in fact like jazz. For jazz is what Ms. Round serves up on third track 'Body Shaped Bruise', and I can't get the bloody thing out of my head.
It's just that she has The Voice. Cat Power has it, Scout Niblett has it, and now Carina too - that gorgeous honey smoked lilt with just a hint of darkness about it that you can't quite put your finger on.
Credit also goes out to her for the versatility shown across this single - opener 'Into My Blood' out PJs Polly Harvey with its brooding atmospherics and razor sharp vocal delivery, while 'Hookah', the only slight disappointment on this CD, throws in some vaguely ethnic beats and watery sounds to an uninteresting acoustic strum to little effect, but still The Voice shines through.
>SILKWORM
- YOU ARE DIGNIFIED
A
collection of covers of lo-fi favourites from Silkworm, showcasing their
exquisite taste as much as their own musical abilities. Shellac's 'Prayer
to God' is delivered with malicious relish; it's vengeful refrain of
"Kill him, fucking kill him" spat out with the vitriol and
destain its target
deserves. Pavement's 'And Then...' is the only one of these tracks that
I have any real close
affection for, and it's a relatively faithful version, although
the vocal delivery can't quite match up to Malkmus. The
remaining tracks (Bedhead's 'Lepidoptera', Robbie Fulks 'Let's Kill
Saturday Night' & Nina Nastasia's 'That's All There Is') are all
given a nice enough acoustic treatment, but don't stand up to the quality
of the opening salvo. I get the feeling I'm going to be haunted by 'Prayer
to God' for a fair while now.
>INTERPOL
- OBSTACLE 1
'Obstacle
1' get the Arthur Baker treatment on this single, and ends up sounding,
well pretty much like the original but with a few stuttery bits and
some electronic squiggles thrown in that make it sound slightly worse.
Still a great track though, and one of my favourites from the
gloriously dark 'Turn On the Bright Lights' album. As is expected of
Interpol by now, this features stabs of piercing guitar topped with
Paul Banks' gorgeous vocals.
>THE
KILLS - PULL A U
More
scuzzy, hypnotic bluesy rock from The Kills. Sounds quite a bit like
their last release 'Superstition' except not quite as good. Still a
decent enough effort though, and it's nice to see someone giving Jonathan
Fire*Eater their props with a b-side cover of 'The Search for
Cherry red'.
>HARVEY
HALF DEVOURED - CANDLEWAX KIDS
It
seems that in Hull you're not considered a serious musician until you're
in at least thirteen bands, and as such we find Bod and Matt (curiously
credited here as Eddy Bull) of The Edible 5ft Smiths (Bod's also in
Fonda 500) joining up with KT and Josie to form the macabrely monikered
Harvey Half Devoured (check their website for the story behind the name),
not that you'd detect much of their other bands in the perfect four-part
harmonies and rumbling guitars of this offering.
First track 'Off Centre' is the pick of the bunch, all PJ Harvey rhythms and squalling lead guitar, the vocals intertwining in the devastating way that Snow Patrol's used to before they went boring. 'Backburner' and 'Hail Mary' take things back to the early nineties hey-day of indie with their harmonised vocals and clanging guitars, before 'Casket' takes things down for a low key acoustic finale. Up next, Nicholas from Fonda 500's new drum & bass/Mongolian folk music side project.
>GIRLY
FREAK SHOW - DEMO
Girly Freak Show chuck
together elements of The Raincoats, Hole, The Distillers, The Shangri-Las
and just about every girl band ever to have curled a lip to the camera
while bashing out high tempo distorted guitar riffs. To be honest, you
probably already know what this sounds like, but that doesn't diminish
it's slightly messy charm, with 'Too Fat' and psycho stalker anthem
'You Can't Leave Me' ("You can't leave me 'cause I won't let you,
you're gonna love me & I'm gonna get you") both rumbling past
in an affecting manner. Things come unstuck a little on 'Rain Song',
the token 'serious' one, complete with string accompanyment, but all
in all there's just enough of herself in these songs to make Girly Freak
Show a little bit different.
>RENMINBI
- THE PEOPLE'S EP
They're
from New York, but fortunately they don't follow the grave robbing,
bandwagon jumping of many of their fellow citizens, instead chosing
to plough a post-rock furrow of their own. And, on occassion it works
- bypassing the uneventful opening instrumental 'Drug Song', we get
'Fake Out', a delicate and minimal whisper of a song carried along by
singer/keyboardist SMV's astonishingly Kim Gordon like vocals, before
'Let's Kiss' lets rip with a frenetically twisted bass line and spoken/screamed
lyrics, before breaking into a percussive meltdown.
>JANE'S
ADDICTION - TRUE NATURE
My
god, if they keep sending me stuff at their current rate I'm going to
have open a whole new site just to deal with Janes Addiction reviews.
Anyway, this is more of the same from Perry Farrell & co - high
sheen stadium rock with soaring vocals, big guitars, thunderous drums,
etc, etc. And again, they do it better than pretty much anyone else
(although not quite as well as they did on 'Just Because').
>COLOUR
OF FIRE - CUT IT
"Produced
by Pedro Ferriera of Darkness fame" read the press release, and
a shudder went down my spine, the bandwagon starts here. Or so I thought,
thankfully, CoF sound nothing like the Suffolk upstarts currently taking
over the airwaves (and yes, I know I gave their album a good
review, but it's getting old real quick), instead opting for an Emo/metal
crossover sound in the vein of Hell is for Heroes, or a less screechy
Million Dead, and it does it pretty well - while this kind of thing
doesn't generally push my buttons I could certainly see plenty of people
I know thrashing about to it after a couple of pints of cheap cider
at the local rock night. Things start to go wrong when they attempt
to show their sensitive side on the heel dragging 'Images of You', but
then doesn't it always with this kind of thing? Stick to the rock boys,
you do it well.
www.colouroffire.co.uk has more
>BLOC
PARTY - DEMO
I love it when I get stuff like this
- a CDR with no tracklisting, no press release and not even the slightest
hint of what might be contained within. In this case, Bloc Party supply
the tunes to back up the mystery. Not a million miles away from Moving
Units punk/funk/disco party, but with a distinctly British flavour,
the first track is a handclap backed stomper with a driving bassline
and wonderfully squiggly guitars, which careens off the rails at breakneck
speed before screeching to a halt just as suddenly. The second track
is comparatively sedate: jangly guitars and a Mark E Smith like vocal
mingling with the jerky beats, before the third and final track rumbles
along like Interpol with a firecracker shoved up their immaculately
tailored arses.
>ART
BRUT - BRUTLEGS
You've got to admire their ambition;
'I want to be the man who writes the song, that makes Israel and Palestine
get along' they sing, before writing a song 'as universal as happy birthday'
and playing it on Top of the Pops for 8 weeks in a row. They might not
be there quite yet, but their spoken/shouted vocals and barbed art punk
guitar lines are taking them in the right direction.
Go to http://listen.to/artbrut and listen to Art Brut
>BURN
LIKE NERO - THEORY OF OPERATION
It's a real shame when something like
this happens. These are quality songs: New Order basslines, keys and
beats that flit between Faint style dark & foreboding to Ladytron
sleek and poppy, and a deep vocal with just a hint of rawness to it.
Then they go and spoil it with some of the worst, most cliche ridden
lyrics it's ever been my misfortune to review. Worth checking out if
you can endure the reams of sci-fi 'futuristic' nonsense and clumsy
metaphors.
www.burnlikenero.com has more
>THE
GOLDEN VIRGINS - RENAISSANCE
KID
Almost
a year ago now, I started hearing rumours of a great new scene in the
North-East, based around a couple of bands from Sunderland. Ever wary
of the changing winds of the music biz, I rushed out to find out what
I could, catching one band live, and getting my hands on a copy of the
other's debut single. The live band didn't really do it for me - kind
of jerky indie sung in strong accented voice. They were The Futureheads,
and went on to receive huge acclaim from the nation's music press. The
single 'Seen the Light' by The Golden Virgins on the other hand was
a slab of pure bitter vitriol squeezed into the form of a three minute
alt-country track about dumping an old lover, and was one of the best
singles to come my way all year. After that, nothing; until now that
is.
And the good news is that B-side 'Shadows of Your Love', follows a similar blues and whisky infused path, tugging at the tear ducts like a once prosperous man drowning his sorrows in a deserted bar. Strange then that for the A-side, they'd pick a fuzzy guitared Supergrass meets Super Furry Animals glammed up rocker. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, just lacking the inspiration of their lower tempo efforts.
Visit The Golden Virgins at www.rexrecords.com